The patent wars rage on and the latest development is from Google has appealed to have a selection of Apple held telecommunication patents that are utilised in the iPhone to be made standardised systems due to their generic nature and industry wide use. If successful the move would put an end to many of the Android based Apple enforced lawsuits that are happening around the world.
In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Google General Counsel Kent Walker wrote:
“While collaborative Standards Setting Organizations (SSOs) play an important part in the overall standard setting system, and are particularly prominent in industries such as telecommunications, they are not the only source of standards.
“Indeed, many of the same interoperability benefits that the FTC and others have touted in the SSO context also occur when one firm publishes information about an otherwise proprietary standard and other firms then independently decide (whether by choice or of necessity) to make complementary investments to support that standard in their products.
“Because proprietary or de facto standards can have just as important effects on consumer welfare, the Committee’s concern regarding the abuse of SEPs should encompass them as well.”
Essentially Google thinks that Apple’s patents are so generic that they should be standards and that they are commercially essential. Patents that cover features that are so popular they have become ubiquitous.
As usual two camps have formed ones that believe that patents like slide to unlock should not be used to get devices banned for sale. And there are those that feel that Apple’s technology there’s a big difference between technology that became popular because it was adopted as an industry standard and technology that became popular because consumers fell in love with it.
We’ve already weighed in on the patent wars in this video and in case you missed it we’re also giving a way 3 Samsung Galaxy Nexus handsets with Jelly Bean because it nearly got banned!
Via TechRadar
